Talk:Heavy Cruiser/@comment-26915086-20180807201131
Greetings all, I'm back from a bit of a Hiatus, I've been well, just busy. It's incredible to see the tremendous progress made by some of the contributors on here, namely Ebola, (grats on 70kts my dude) I feel like I should share some of the ships which I have built, starting with my favorite. NCS. Dyasdera is a large SCR intended as a replacement for the Chika and Tet classes of CRs, she is armed with the fearsome 32cm gun, sits at 210 m length (the same as baltimore in game) and displaces a mere 13.3ktons. The 32 is a bit of an odd duck in the grand scheme of things, it lacks the range of the German 28 but sits lower and has greater damage potential this makes it more of a brawling gun for a fast but durable ship instead of a sniper (like the aforementioned 28) I feel this whole intermediate class of weapons is underutilized, most cruisers tend to be armed with 5 turrets of 8", 6" or 15cm guns, whereas most battleships/battlecruisers tend to be armed with 36cm guns or larger I certainly don't consider the 28cm-32cm tier to be capital ship grade, nor do they possess the sort of fire rate one would want to punish destroyers. The weapons are very competent ton for ton, but sit in a weird place in terms of what kind of ship would use them. The best I have come up with is cruiser hunting and giving yourself a chance against battleships with a cruiser, for the former, you possess a 6km range advantage which should allow you to take comfortable pot shots, against the latter you are at a 3km range disadvantage, rather than a 9km disadvantage and the horizon should help you close somewhat. In my fleet NCS. Chika and NCS. Tet, modeled after irl Alaska class cruisers, were the primary users of these intermediate weapons, but these ships are less like cruisers and more like cruiser hunters. Which makes them excelent battlefleet support ships as they deal with cruisers allowing battleships such as Andromeda to deal with other capital ships. Unfortunately these ships are too valuable to send into fast attack fleets. Due to growing concerns about a dearth of modern cruisers to escort fast attack ships like Traveler Class SBBs I decided to contract two cruiser designs, one light SCR built to back up new fast attack frigates (I will probably post about these soon) and a heavier SCR to escort Traveler and associated capital ships (including new fast escort carriers) In this post I will be discussing NCS. Dyasdera, the latter of the two ships mentioned, I may discuss the former, NCS. Tetragnatha at a later date. Here is the basic requirement list for the SCR-18 project, of course I give some deference to how she looks but that’s less tangible: -no heavier than 15ktons -60kts (minimum) -Durability and stability (satisfactory) -4x3 32cm Italian gun (main armament) -AAA armament capable of dealing with NCS. Kiwi's air wing -1X spotter plane with catapult To accomplish this I decided to go with a thinner profile than I would ordinarily for such a cannon requirement, I experimented with a better armor composite to compensate. I ended up with a pretty solid compromise of speed, protection, and armament. This also kept the weight low, she ended up 1.7ktons underbudget. AAA was a bit trickier, and I'm still not 100% content with this configuration, but she can knock down dive bombers with reasonable efficiency, and isn't the real target of air attack in her battle group so I have decided to live with it for the time being. Overall this ship is an impressive brawler easily able to take on ships in higher weight classes, such as battleships and battlecruisers, while hard countering Cruisers armed with traditional armaments. She is far from perfect, as previously mentioned, I'm not content with the AAA, and her lack of secondary armament makes her less effective than cruisers against fast frigates, this said, she is a welcome addition the fleet. Cheers! Walrus